Drawing Technology: Sketches of Isambard Kingdom Brunel

This paper examines the sketchbooks of the British Engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, famed for his work on the Great Western Railway and the first purpose-built transatlantic steam ship. His sketching methods are described, through exploratory analysis of the 57-volume Brunel sketchbook archive (1830–1866). Through two in-depth case-studies of diagram series enumerated by Brunel, we capture the role of sketching as an aid to Brunel’s reasoning about engineering design, and explore diagramming as externalised cognition, central to the process of Brunel’s engineering.